In his excellent book In Search of York, Robert Betts offers an apt summary of York’s history: ‘[He] grew to be an unusually large and powerful man;…was viewed with awe as ‘big medicine’ by Indians who had never seen a black man; proved to be instrumental in keeping the Shoshonis from departing with the horses needed…to cross the Rockies; …had a falling out with Clark prior to 1811 and was hired to a man in Louisville who treated him shabbily; in all probability lost his wife when her master moved to Natchez; was eventually freed and given a wagon and six horses…; and died somewhere far from the relatives and friends he had been close to most of his life.’

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Two months after the expedition ended, in November of 1806, Lewis and Clark were traveling east with Sheheke and other Indians. William Clark stopped for a few weeks in Virginia, however, to visit the girl he hoped to someday marry. In the tradition of the day, 36-year-old Clark was courting 15-year-old Judith ‘Julia’ Hancock. Clark had met her before the expedition and had named a river after her (Judith’s River) in Montana. William and Julia were married in 1808, a year after President Jefferson appointed him superintendent of Indian affairs for the Missouri Territory.

The Clark home became a social center of St. Louis, especially after Julia’s piano was shipped from the East. During the next 10 years — as William served an extremely active public life, including a term as governor — the couple had four sons and one daughter, naming the first child Meriwether Lewis Clark. Julia was diagnosed with cancer in 1816, and William took her back to her family in Virginia in 1819. He was tending to his duties in St. Louis in the summer of 1820 when he received word that 28-year-old Julia had died. The next year William married Harriet Kennerly Radford (she died 10 years later). The couple had two sons, one of whom lived until 1900.

William Clark was 69 when he died at the home of his son Meriwether on September 1, 1838. ‘People lined the streets for blocks to watch the cortege led by a military band,’ wrote Clark’s nephew. ‘Following the carriages were many men on horseback; and, as we came within a half-mile or so of the burying ground, minute guns were fired from a cannon. So this great and good man, whose whole life had been given in selfless service to his country, was laid to rest.’

One year after Clark’s death, Indian agent Joshua Pilcher wrote, ‘On the 21st inst. Toussaint Charbonneau…arrived here from the Mandan villages, a distance of 1600 miles, and came into the office, tottering under the infirmities of 80 winters…. This man has been a faithful servant of the Government — though in a humble capacity.’ So old Charbonneau survived Clark by at least one year.

By the time Lewis and Clark arrived at the Mandan villages in 1804, Charbonneau had been trading and living among the Indians for several years. He continued such work after the expedition and during the next three decades appears repeatedly in the record of the West:

‘Charbonneau & Jessaume Keep us in Constant uproar with their Histories and wish to make fear among the Engagees, these two rascals ought to be hung for their perfidy, they…stir up the Indians and pretend to be friends to the white People at the same time but we find them to be our Enemies.’ — John Luttig, Fort Manual, 1812

‘We partook of a fine supper Prepared by Old Charboneau, consisting of Meat pies, bread, fricassied pheasants Boiled tongues, roast beef — and Coffee.’ — F. A. Chardon, Fort Clark (North Dakota), 1834

‘One of the Young Sioux deliberately fired at a Gros Ventre boy…Old Charbono, made a narrow escape two balls having passed through his hat.’ — David Mitchell, Fort Clark, 1836

A legal document executed in 1843 named J.B. Charbonneau to receive $320 ‘from the estate of his deceased Father.’ The exact date of Charbonneau’s death, as well as the extent of contact between father and son, is unknown. But Jean Baptiste also became a mountain man, living a life both similar to and radically different from his father’s. A week after bidding goodbye to Charbonneau, Sacagawea, and Jean Baptiste at the Mandan villages in 1806, William Clark had written to Charbonneau: ‘As to your little son (my boy Pomp) you well know my fondness for him and my anxiety to take and raise him as my own child.’ Seven years later, after Sacagawea’s death (and when Toussaint Charbonneau was presumed to have perished in an Indian attack), Clark became legal guardian for Jean Baptiste and his sister Lizette. Nothing is known of Lizette’s subsequent history. After living with Clark for about 10 years, 18-year-old Jean Baptiste met 25-year-old Prince Paul of Württemberg, Germany. The prince received Clark’s permission to take the young man to Europe. When Jean Baptiste returned to the United States six years later, he had received a classical education and was fluent in German, French, and Spanish. He promptly headed west to trap, soon adding several Indian languages to his repertoire. Jean Baptiste spent the next 15 years as a scout and trapper — with the Robidoux Fur Brigade in 1830, with Joe Meek in 1831,and Jim Bridger in 1832. He met explorers Nathaniel Wyeth in the mid-1830s and John C. Frémont several years after that. Like his father, Jean Baptiste knew how to cook: ‘One of the people was sent to gather mint,’ wrote Frémont, ‘with the aid of which [Jean Baptiste] concocted very good julep; and some boiled buffalo tongue, and coffee with the luxury of sugar, were soon set before us.’ A month later, another traveler wrote of Jean Baptiste, ‘There was a quaint humor and shrewdness in his conversation, so garbed with intelligence and perspicuity, that he at once insinuated himself into the good graces of listeners, and commanded their admiration and respect.’

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